Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) - Karen Rose Page 0,86

world. Odell was a career soldier with a smile that lit up any room. Neil was going to be an elementary school teacher. He cheated at Scrabble, but I still played with him because he was so damn funny. Christie ran track in high school. She wanted to go to the Olympics.”

“She never made it,” Tom murmured.

“No.”

“And Fritz?”

“He was the heart of us. Never forgot a birthday, always had a smile or a joke to lift our spirits when we were homesick. He was a good man. Such a good man.”

Tom’s jaw clenched, ever so slightly. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d choose a bad man.” He pointed to the sketch she’d made of the tattoo she planned to get. “What happened to them?”

Liza tilted her head, gesturing to the laptop screen, gone dark again. “That was taken the morning before the attack. We’d gone to a village to distribute supplies and meds. One of the villagers saw the cross on my uniform and begged me to help his wife. She was in labor and there was no doctor available.” She leaned into Pebbles, remembering the village, devastated and battle-torn. “They’d been bombed and there was very little left. Which was why we were there with supplies.”

He squeezed the hand he still held. “Did you deliver the baby?”

“Yes. It was a little boy. A healthy little boy with such a pair of lungs.” She sighed. “We were leaving the house and our spirits were a little high. Even the gruffest of the guys melted at the cry of a newborn baby. Plus, the villagers were so grateful. They’d congregated in the street to take the supplies we were giving out. Some sang and celebrated the new baby. They’d lost so many people and they had a tiny spark of something good. That kind of happiness is kind of contagious and we were distracted. Just a little, but it was enough. I looked up and saw a flash of light on the rooftop across the street.”

“A sniper,” he murmured. “Like yesterday morning.”

“Yes, but this wasn’t just one. There were three men on the roof, and they fired. A lot.”

“But you weren’t hit,” he said, a hint of desperation in his voice.

“Yes, I was, but it was only a graze. A few of us had seen them at the same time and screamed ‘gun,’ and then everything went sideways. There was chaos and so much gunfire.” She had to stop for a moment, her anxiety starting to spike. “And screaming.” So much screaming. “The village residents were running for cover, falling in the streets. Not getting up.”

“But your unit fired back?”

“Those of us who were still alive.” She looked down, concentrated on the big hand still holding hers. “Fritz wasn’t one of them. He’d thrown himself over me. To protect me. By the time I pushed him off me, he was already dead.”

Tom hesitated. “I thought married couples weren’t allowed to serve together?”

“They’re not. We’d gotten married a few weeks before that—we’d gotten two weeks of R&R stateside, and Fritz proposed. Took me home to meet his family. They wanted to be a part of the ceremony, so . . . I said yes.”

“They were good people? Fritz’s family?”

“Yes. Very good people.” Too good for a woman who’d only married their son because she couldn’t have the man she wanted. “I liked them very much.”

“Have you seen them? Since Fritz was killed, I mean.”

“Yes, as soon as I landed in the U.S. after my discharge. They live in Jersey City and I flew into Newark, so it was close by.” They’d held on to her as they’d all cried, and she’d cried with them. “And then I got on a plane to Chicago to see you all.”

“Last Christmas,” he murmured.

“Yes.” She’d arrived as the Hunters and the Buchanans—the family who’d taken her in after her sister’s murder—were sitting down to Christmas dinner. It was then that she’d learned Tom’s Tory was dead.

“You didn’t say anything,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell us about Fritz then?”

She turned her face into Pebbles’s soft muzzle, shaking her head.

“What?” he demanded, his tone going sharp. “Why didn’t you?”

The thinly veiled anger in his tone snapped the lid off her own temper. “Because someone would have asked to see his picture,” she spat. “And then they would have known the truth.”

“What truth?”

Yanking her hand free of his, she unlocked her cell phone and found Fritz’s official army photo. Dressed in a pressed uniform, his body ramrod straight, he’d